it collects great stores for the winter. The village consisted of
ten tents built without order on the first high strand bank. The
tents differed somewhat in construction from the common Chukch
tents, and as drift-wood appears to be met with on the beach only in
limited quantity, whale-bones had been used on a very large scale in
the frame of the tent. Thus, for instance, the tent-covering of
seal-skin was stretched downwards over the ribs or lower jawbones of
the whale which were fixed in the ground like poles. These were
united above with slips of whale-bones, from which other slips of
the same sort of bones or of whalebone rose to the summit of the
tent, and finally, to prevent the blast from raising the
tent-covering from the ground, its border was loaded with masses of
large heavy bones. Eleven shoulder-blades of the whale were thus
used round a single tent. In the absence of drift-wood, whale and
seal bones drenched in train-oil are also used as fuel in cooking in
the open air during summer; a large curved whale rib was placed over
the fire-place to serve as a pot-holder; the vertebrae of the whale
were used as mortars; the entrances to the blubber-cellars were
closed with shoulder-blades of the whale; hollowed whale-bones were
used as lamps; shoes of whale-bone or pieces of the under-jaw and
the straighter ribs were used for shoeing the sledges, for spades
and ice-mattocks, the different parts of the implement being bound
together with whale-bone fibres, &c. [345]

Masses of black seal-flesh, and long, white, fluttering strings of
inflated intestines, were hung up between the tents, and in their
interior there were everywhere to be seen bloody pieces of flesh,
prepared in a disgusting way or lying scattered about, whereby both
the dwellings and their inhabitants, who were occupied with hunting,
had a more than usually disagreeble appearance. A pleasant
interruption was formed by the heaps of green willow branches which
were placed at the entrance of nearly every tent, commonly
surrounded by women and children, who ate the leaves with delight.
At some places whole sacks of Rhodiola and various other plants had
been collected for food during winter. As distinctive of the
Chukches here it may be mentioned in the last place that they were
abundantly provided with European household articles, among them
_Remington guns_, and that none of them asked for spirits.

Most of the seals which were seen in the tents were